Recent changes

Studio X will begin with two ingredients; a methodology and a site. Both are too broad to remain useful for long, but their interaction will determine the studio's clearer brief. The methodology borrows from Manuel De Landa's discussion of meshworks; the site is the River Don, its valley or hinterland.

De Landa's meshworks set out an interesting approach to analysing cultural structures, urban history and change. It is not a design tool, but its potential for informing design will be explored and developed by the studio

In his A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, [1997] De Landa introduces meshworks as follows:

'Markets and bureaucracies, as well as unplanned and planned cities, are concrete instances of a more general distinction: self- organised meshworks of diverse elements, versus hierarchies of uniform elements. But […] meshworks and hierarchies not only coexist and intermingle, they constantly give rise to one another.' p.32

De Landa's stated intention is to use meshworks, and the nonlinear or dynamical studies they emerge from, in combination with more established tools:

'Of course, analytical tools cannot be dismissed due to [their] inherent limitation. Rather, a top-down approach to the study of complex entities needs to be complemented with a bottom-up approach; analysis needs to go hand in hand with synthesis.' p.17

The studio will be mindful of this advice, working a hybrid combination of traditional analytic tools of urbanism and the insights of meshworks.